Community Chat 1/18/2012 - CLOSED

[PayPal_Adrian]

Hey everybody!

Join the PayPal Community Forums moderation team in our weekly Community Chat on Wednesday, January 18th, from 4 to 5 PM CST (2-3 PM PST). 

Our moderator staff will be here to answer your questions regarding PayPal - or just to get to know you.   This thread will remain locked until the chat is open, so if you have a question you'd like to see answered by the community before then, please feel free to post a topic by clicking on "Post a Topic."  As always, PayPal customer service can be reached by clicking on "Contact Us" and selecting help via phone or email.

See you then!

Adrian

[PayPal_Adrian]

This week's Community Chat is now open and unlocked! 

Our moderator staff will be available for the next hour to answer your questions about PayPal, get to know you, or just have idle conversation.  We do ask that posts follow the PayPal Community Help Forum Policy and the Forum Decorum Guidelines.

Once the session is over, this thread will be locked again, but you will be able to view the content in the forums.  This chat is a regular feature every Wednesday from 4-5 PM CST, so if you missed us this week, please feel free to stop by in the future! We want to get to know you!

Today, we're going to keep the icebreaker simple.  Tell us about your favorite superhero - no capes required.

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi everyone!

I love The Tick. The concept of a none-too-bright superhero has always been amusing to me.

Spooooooooon!

Olivia

[JoeH]

Olivia, I am helping a friend with her account. We are setting up a charity.

I want to let people choose from a list of amounts to donate:

Friend = $5

Silver = $10

Gold = $25 and so on.

Does that mean I must choose Add to Cart ... there is no way it could be "Donate"?

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi JoeH,

If you would like to use the Donate button format existent in PayPal's button creation tool, the dropdown option is not available. You can either specify one amount, or allow the donor to specify their own amount.

Some other options are to make three separate buttons, or look into custom coding possibilities not available in the button creator.

I hope this helps!

Olivia

[JoeH]

Could I use the Add to Cart functionality, swipe the art for Donate, and replace the art on my site?

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi JoeH

If you are accepting donations, it's important to always use the appropriate button type.

Olivia

[JoeH]

Olivia, are you saying "Joe, you should use Donate if you mean Donate"?

I want to suggest finite amounts ... I think that's important.

Are you saying I "must" do Donate for Donations as a terms & conditions kind of thing?

Between the two options, I'd rather Add to Cart and have options versus Donate and have only one option or an open variable field.

Please advise?

[PayPal_Frank]

---

@JoeH wrote:

Olivia, are you saying "Joe, you should use Donate if you mean Donate"?

I want to suggest finite amounts ... I think that's important.

Are you saying I "must" do Donate for Donations as a terms & conditions kind of thing?

Between the two options, I'd rather Add to Cart and have options versus Donate and have only one option or an open variable field.

Please advise?

---

There's nothing in the User Agreement that says you are required to use the Donate button but it's still important to use the correct button for other reasons.  We recommend using the button that best fits the type of payment being sent because the button type can also affect how the checkout looks and the verbiage used in the payment emails.

While the donate buttons do not support drop down menus, it's possible to code one into your site and set the donation amount dynamically with javascript.  I know that's a lot more work but I think it would be worth it to avoid buyer confusion during and after checkout.

You might find this post on our developer forum helpful as a starting point as it has an example script:

Javascript drop-down product menu & donations

- Frank

[_Zazu]

Favorite super hero...this is a hard one. I have, in my time growing from kid to kidult, shifted between many super heros. For quite some time The Flash was where it was at, no one was cooler.

Then along came Gambit from X-Men but he quickly fell victim to Nightcrawler, who as of today still claims the top spot on my list.